Eggs are a popular direct sales and farmers market item. Dr. Karcher will help you get started, or fine-tune your egg enterprise with solid, basic information on breed selection, facilities, sanitation, best practices and more.

Pest Management from an Ecological Framework

May 9

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Online

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This free, one-hour webinar is presented by NRCS Soil Health Division. The webinar will focus on ecological management of agricultural pests (insects and slugs), and it will emphasize the importance of pairing soil health practices with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to ensure that gains in soil health are not degraded by unnecessary pesticide use. Incorporating IPM alongside other soil health practices maximizes the potential for farm fields to better withstand pest invasion while diminishing the potential for pesticides to degrade benefits provided by soil health practices.

Compliance Spotlight: The New Animal Welfare Regulations and Their Impact on Organic Livestock Producers

May

​9.

Online

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This one-hour Oregon Tilth webinar will discuss in great detail the changes to the Animal Welfare Regulations and how they will impact organic livestock operations—both in terms of daily physical practices as well as structural changes that may be necessary for some operations. Presenters will also be providing participants with various resources to assist them in making these adjustments so that their operations remain in compliance with national organic regulations.

This presentation will outline the impacts of drought on trees and the multiple strategies needed to protect them. During periods of drought, the knee-jerk response in many communities is to remove all lawn areas in the name of water conservation. If trees in those landscapes had been dependent on lawn irrigation to survive, they will suffer. I will focus on proper irrigation of trees, with and without surrounding turf areas, and how to manage irrigation of trees throughout their life cycle for good health. I will also discuss tree selection for long-term urban forest resiliency.

Get Your Farm Funded - Tips for Applying to Grants

May 9, 6pm – 7pm. Webinar. Looking for ideas on where to find funding and how to craft a successful proposal? This is the webinar for you! FACT's Larissa McKenna will provide practical advice for farmers navigating the grant application process.

May 10th. Mosquito and ticks are major nuisance pests that vector many diseases. Their feeding habits can affect your farm's bottom line by detouring the public from visiting and reducing animal health. They can cost you and your employees’ time and money with doctor visits, and if left untreated many of these vector diseases can lead to long-term chronic health issues and death. Topics covered include: pest biology, common arthropod-borne illnesses, personal prevention, and control methods.

May 13th. Mushroom and fungi will have a particularly important role in our future society and sustainable revolution. This FREE workshop will show the benefits and challenges of cultivation with examples for an outdoor garden and a simple primer to indoor cultivation. https://www.facebook.com/events/162274820950158/

Opportunities

Survey Assistance

My name is Steph I am putting together a survey for ranchers across the nation. It will explore some of ranchers' grassland management practices and some of the ideas that go behind them. Having said that, before I send it out, I need to make sure that my concepts make sense and are truly measuring what I set out to measure. I would guess that it takes 10-15 minutes to fill out (and reads better from a computer than a phone). I very much appreciate your help and if you want more detail into what I am doing, please give me a call (402-926-6732)! Steph Kennedy

If you know of someone looking for an internship opportunity involving both produce and livestock. please have them call me or text me on my cell phone 308-754-8370. This internship would involve experiences on a few local farms approximately 50% of hours would be paid and 50% considered educational.

Andrew Hollister,

Hollister Farms

Health Insurance in Agriculture Survey

How does health insurance affect farmers and ranchers? Help influence rural health policy in upcoming survey. Farmers and ranchers: How does health insurance affect you? Help influence rural health policy by participating in an upcoming USDA funded survey. Your responses will help researchers understand how health-insurance policy affects farmers’ and ranchers’ decisions to invest, expand, and grow their enterprises. Selected participants received a letter about the survey in February. If you would like to participate follow this link: https://survey.uvm.edu/index.php/132344?lang=en

Resource Available

Rural Food Business Toolkit - this resource was designed by the Center for Rural Affairs alongside a USDA Rural Development project in northeast Nebraska which provided in person instruction and support. The toolkit provides resources to growers, processors and food business owners to help them succeed. It can be found and downloaded here: http://www.cfra.org/rural-food-business-toolkit.

​Upcoming

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Understanding the GMO Debate

Thursday, May 18 at 1:00 pm CDT. Registration is currently open, and seats are limited. Participants will gain access to course materials on May 11th after registering and paying the $10 fee at: https://extension.catalog.instructure.com/courses/ext-gmo. Let’s dive into the GMO Debate, a world full of conflicting viewpoints, misinformation, scare tactics, overwhelming scientific facts, and where even our dog’s opinion matters. The objective of this course is to bring an informative and neutral discussion to the main GMO topics: Traditional Plant Breeding versus GMOs, Food Safety, Pesticide Use in Agriculture, GMO Impacts on the Environment, and the Most Current Scientific Review of GMOs. Participants will gain practical knowledge on the GMO topic, which will aid in education and conversations with clientele. The course will include materials provided in the online course as well as live weekly discussions using the Zoom.us webinar tool.